Bad Guys (29 page)

“Please,” Kinney said, pushing his mug toward her. The bastard had the manners of a prince.

“I'm okay,” Gibbons said to her and she passed on to the next customer. “Suppose I went ahead and told Ivers about your moonlight job. You could make all kinds of charges against me in retaliation. But what about Tozzi? He's crazy, and he's got nothing to lose. He'd come gunning for you sure as shit.”

Kinney smiled. “Tozzi's no problem. We'll find him.” He was getting cocky now.

“I'm a pretty old guy,” Gibbons said. “With a good lawyer, I could do like the mob bosses do, play sick, stretch out my appeals, use all those tactics. What if I decide it's worth facing prosecution just to nail your ass to the wall?”

Kinney picked up his check. “Who knows?” He dug into his pocket and counted out the exact amount.

The old waitress whizzed by and scooped up his money and the check as soon as he put it down. Kinney swiveled on his stool to get up.

“Tell me something,” Gibbons said. Kinney stopped to face him. “Is it hard to cut a guy's head off?”

The corners of Kinney's lips turned up as he shook his head. “Not at all. I recommend a heavy machete with a sharp edge. Start from the throat, not the back of the neck. It's easier that way.” He stood up and reached into his pocket. “It's the eyes that are tricky.” He put a quarter down on the counter. “See you around, Bert,” he said.

Gibbons watched him walk out the door, as straight and confident and unwrinkled as a senior-class president.

He finished the last piece of his sweet roll and drained his cup. The waitress appeared instantly for a refill, but Gibbons declined. She immediately moved on to offer refills to her other customers, a model of early-morning service and efficiency. As he stood up to go, he stared at the miserly tip Kinney had left. Gibbons picked up the quarter, put it in his pocket, and replaced it with a dollar bill.

Walking toward the door, he was conscious of Kinney's quarter in his pocket the same way you're conscious of the bottom of your shoe even after you've scraped off the dogshit. He pushed through the glass doors and went outside. It was like moving through warm Jell-O out there. For a moment he wondered whether Kinney was really human.

Tozzi wandered through the big old house and picked up information all around him like a video camera. The teenage girl's name was Chrissie. It was engraved on a locket Tozzi found on her bureau:
“To Chrissie with all our love—Mom and Dad.”
Two of the boys shared a very cluttered room with bunk beds. There was a handmade sign on their door:
“DO NOT TRESPASS—ALL TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT—GREGORY KINNEY AND BILL KINNEY, JR., PROPRIETORS.”
The two younger girls shared another room, a very pink room. One was named Virginia; Tozzi saw it written on the page edges of a geography textbook. The other girl's name remained a mystery. In a small room no bigger than a good-sized closet, Tozzi found the little boy's room. It was the room on the second floor directly over the foyer. Tozzi leaned over the crib and parted the curtains with the barrel of the .38. He was a little nervous about the Buick. It had been in this neighborhood since nine o'clock this morning, and now it was just after two. His wasn't the only car parked on the street, though, so there was no reason for the cops to get suspicious. And actually the big old sedan looked like the kind of car someone's maid might drive.

Sitting in the Buick that morning, he'd watched the house, watched a school bus come for the two boys and the two younger girls, probably taking them to day camp. He watched the mailman making his rounds, watched gardeners and plumbers come and go, watched housewives leave then return with bags of groceries. Surveillance was always boring, and it made him edgy. Tozzi started worrying that he'd never get a
look at Kinney's wife. But just as he was about to chuck it all and get some lunch, a small blonde finally came out the front door. She had the little boy with her, holding his hand as they walked down the front path. Tozzi could see that she was talking to him. When they got to the driveway, she scooped the kid up, kissed him, and put him in the car seat in the back of a metallic-blue Dodge Caravan. She got behind the wheel, turned the engine over, and backed out of the drive.

Women never let their cars warm up, Tozzi noticed. If you don't let the oil circulate for a minute or so, it can be murder on the valves down the line. Tozzi imagined Kinney lecturing his wife about the expense of a valve job. He'd never met Kinney, but he imagined him as being pompous and critical. Gibbons described him as an Ivy League type. Observing his home, Tozzi pictured him as a Yuppie. But Kinney was also a trained professional with strong psychopathic tendencies, capable of committing murder to accomplish his dubious goals. It was a description that could also fit himself, Tozzi realized. He was sure that was how Ivers viewed his little runaway.

Gibbons had called late last night at the motel and told him about his breakfast meeting with Kinney. He gave Tozzi an address in Montclair, New Jersey, told him it was Kinney's home address.

“Check out the place in daylight,” Gibbons had suggested. “Watch his wife, get a description for me, the kids too and where they go to school. Find out what kind of cars they drive. I need to know intimate things about his home life so I can make him think twice before he does anything. We mean business too, I want him to understand that. Right now he thinks we're sitting ducks. We've got to make him realize that retaliation is part of the game.”

“You sound like me,” Tozzi said.

Gibbons didn't respond.

“How'd you manage to get his address?” All agents had to have unlisted home phone numbers, and only SACs, their assistants, and the brass in Washington had access to personnel files.

“I followed him when he went out for lunch. He went to a discount sporting-goods store over by City Hall and bought himself a pair of sneakers. I saw that he paid with a credit card. Later that afternoon, I waited till he went to the File Room, then I went to his cubicle. The sneakers were in a plastic bag behind his desk. He left his MasterCard receipt in the bag. As I suspected, he had to write his address and home phone on the slip.”

“You'd think he'd be more careful.”

“Well, he wasn't.”

Walking through the silent house now, Tozzi wondered if he could be so careless. A simple oversight like that could cost him his life. He thought back over his actions of the past couple of days, looking for the fatal mistake. He couldn't think of any. But of course, Kinney's carelessness probably wouldn't occur to him right away either. Not until it was too late.

Tozzi left the toddler's room and went into the master bedroom, which was dominated by a large four-poster bed. The oak posts were thick and imposing; the tops were carved pineapples. It crossed his mind that the Kinneys might be kinky.

On the dresser there were some family pictures. Tozzi studied the group shot of the kids sitting in a line back to front. It must have been taken a few years ago because Chrissie still looked like a kid. Tozzi had seen a more recent photo in her room. She was cute.

There was a picture of Mrs. Kinney sitting on a donkey with a big sombrero on her head. She looked happier in this picture than she did in person. The Kinneys' wedding picture was also there, a studio portrait, him in a tux sidled up behind his beaming bride. Tozzi studied Kinney's face. He had the sharp features of a go-getter and a Kennedy haircut. In fact, he looked like he could be some distant cousin of the Kennedys. He had that look of aggressive privilege. What he didn't already have he'd go out and get for himself.

Tozzi glanced back at the picture of mousy Mrs. Kinney sitting on the donkey and he thought about Joanne. Why was it that guys like Kinney always have everything? Wife, family, nice house in an upscale neighborhood. Even if he hadn't chosen to go renegade, Tozzi doubted that he could ever have all this. Certainly not with Joanne. Maybe the Irish just assimilated better than the Italians. Italians are born suspicious, and their suspicion makes them suspicious to others, automatic outsiders. Who knows? Maybe he'd just made the wrong choices. He'd become the wrong kind of criminal. A vigilante just isn't bad enough to get the kind of rewards Kinney got. What was that phrase he saw on a hooker's T-shirt once?—“Good girls go to heaven, but bad girls go everywhere.”

In the bathroom off the master bedroom, Tozzi found a pair of beat-up New Balance running shoes, size ten. On a hook behind the door hung a pair of blue nylon running shorts and a heavyweight gray T-shirt.
There was an L.L. Bean label in the neck of the shirt. On the sink there was a tube of Aim toothpaste. Opening the medicine cabinet, Tozzi saw that they had both Anacin and Tylenol. Mrs. Kinney also had a prescription for Placidyl, a mild tranquilizer. He saw from the prescription that her first name was Elaine. Tozzi poked around some more and discovered Mrs. Kinney's diaphragm next to a crushed tube of spermicidal jelly. A woman with six kids wasn't much of a recommendation for the diaphragm, he thought.

Suddenly he heard something. He stopped breathing, the gun clutched in his hand, pointed up. It came from downstairs, sounded like a door closing.

“Anybody home?” It was a girl's voice, most likely Chrissie the teenager, though it could've been Elaine Kinney.

Tozzi went back into the bedroom and stood by the open doorway, listening.

“Any of you assholes home?” she repeated bitterly. It had to be the teenager.

Tozzi heard some banging, and he imagined her just getting home from a summer job or maybe summer school, dropping her bag on the wood floor, and moodily skulking around the house. He wondered what he'd do if she found him there. She was just a kid, no threat, and so what if she saw his face? Still, it would be better if Chrissie didn't see an intruder in the house. Kinney should remain confident of his family's security. It would shake him up all the more when Gibbons let him know that his home had been violated.

Tozzi peered out the doorway and waited for Chrissie to give him an indication of where she was so he could decide how he'd get out of the house. Then in the small antique mirror hanging at the top of the stairs, he saw her. She was coming upstairs. She had a can of soda in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

He stepped away from the doorway and got behind the door. He could hear her going into the bathroom off the hallway. It was on the other side of the wall right behind him. He could feel her presence in there.

“Shit.” She said it in a prolonged whine.

He felt her footsteps leaving the bathroom. He moved closer to the doorway. He waited. When he dared to peer out into the hall again, he saw that the phone that had been on a table at the top of the stairway was gone and the cord extended into Chrissie's room.

Good, he thought as he rolled up his pant leg and put the .38 in his ankle holster. Once she started yakking, he could slip downstairs and out the side door through the kitchen, the same way he came in.

Treading carefully, he went out into the hallway, concentrating on getting past Chrissie's door. He was relieved when he saw that she'd closed her door and he hurried to get to the stairs, but as he stepped over the telephone wire he could hear that she was sobbing. He gently pressed his back against the wall and listened for a moment.

“No,” she whined. “Nothing. I just checked . . . They've been sore all week . . . No, not in the morning. It's always just before dinner. I don't think any of them know I've been throwing up every day, but they're gonna find out sooner or later, I know it. What am I gonna do?”

Her sobs were heartbreaking. Tozzi stayed and listened.

“No, that's no good . . . How can you say that, Jenny? He didn't do it on purpose . . . I can't tell him, are you crazy? I don't want anyone to know. Come on, Jenny, think of something. Do you think your sister might let me use her driver's license? . . . So I can get an abortion without my parents knowing about it, that's why. Sometimes you're so stupid . . .”

Tozzi started down the stairs. He'd heard enough to know the story. He just wasn't sure whether he'd tell Gibbons. Hearing the news about his daughter's pregnancy from Gibbons's mouth would certainly rattle Kinney, but it made Tozzi uncomfortable. It didn't seem right to take advantage of the kid's situation. She had enough problems. He'd have to think about this.

He got to the bottom of the stairs and headed for the kitchen. It was the kind of kitchen you see in commercials for floor wax, everything clean and shining. The appliances seemed relatively new, and though the counters were cluttered and the refrigerator door was a display space for crayon drawings held up by magnets shaped like barnyard animals, this kitchen just didn't have the appropriate amount of wear and tear that a family of eight should give it. Tozzi hated it for its pristine condition. It was so perfect, such a deception. Lando's wife kept their kitchen spotless, but he deserved perfection. Any man who could kill the way Kinney killed Lando, Blaney, and Novick deserved to eat in a slaughterhouse.

Suddenly he heard the front door opening. Loud voices, the boys. Tozzi looked around the room frantically for something he could steal,
something he could take away from Kinney. He wanted to hurt this monster, get back at him any way he could.